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Welcome to the Cloud/ Virtualization Management Blog, where you can read the perspectives from Cloud and Virtualization experts. This Blog provides insights into the Cloud/Virtualization Management solution, as well as technical details about specific IBM

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I've been impressed by the speed of
provisioning a set of virtual machines in just a few tens of seconds
using IBM Smart Cloud Provisioning. In most cases you can get a
running virtual machine in less than one minute. The Smart Cloud Provisioning technology
has been devised and particularly optimized for managing the
following cloud infrastructure scenarios: Infrastructure composed of
homogenous resources High level of standardization with
a relative small set of master images used to provision many
instances from the same image... [More]

A usual adoption
pattern for cloud computing are desktops. It's really straight
forward because in general each company has standardized desktops:
only some specific version of the operating system are supported,
only specific flavours, only some applications are allowed and
typically everything is managed by the IT team.
If we think at the
benefits of adopting desktop cloud, some of them really jump
powerfully in front of the eyes: the IT team can really enforce
standardization (e.g. you can select as desktop only one of... [More]

Most generally accepted definitions of Cloud Computing imply the notion of Pay per use . For a Service Provider this means defining how they intend to bill for Cloud Services, while for a Cloud enabled DataCentre in the enterprise this implies some form of showback/chargeback model. As for those consumers actually using the Cloud, they want to understand the financial implications (what will it cost?) before committing their workloads to it. . As a Cloud User Do you want to see what your project will cost before you provision it? See a... [More]

IBM® Tivoli® Service Automation
Manager (TSAM) has delivered a new extension to configure
extra disks in addition to the boot disk when requesting virtual machines
within a Project with VMWare servers. Downloading the installation package from
the Integrated Service Management Library and installing it on top of TSAM 7.2.2
platform enables the cloud administrator to prepare and manage a multi-tenant, customer-segregated
environment for hosting the additional disks. In particular, the cloud
administrator can select the VMWare data... [More]

My three favorite things about OpenStack are The People The Innovation The Interoperability The People San Diego was my second OpenStack summit. Many of the same faces were in the design
summit sessions I attended, but there were many new faces as well. One of the most exciting observations from
the Folsom design summit was the incredible talent pool assembled. The Grizzly summit was no different – it’s
great to interact with so many incredibly smart, deep and experienced
people. I’m convinced that a single
company could never amass... [More]

The IBM® Image Construction and Composition Tool is a web application that simplifies and automates virtual image creation for public and private cloud environments, shielding the differences in cloud implementations from its users. This white paper provides Software Specialists and other product experts with helpful tips and techniques to plan, design, and create software bundles in the Image Construction and CompositionTool.

As businesses adopt cloud environments to control IT complexity, pool resources, and improve cost efficiencies, the TUAM development team have been engaged in evolving the usage and accounting capability in IBM Tivoli Usage and Accounting Manager (TUAM) beyond traditional Enterprise charge-back. In such a shared cloud environment the ability to accurately assess which IT resources and services are being utilized, how much they are being utilized, and by whom is fundamental if service providers are to justify the cost of the IT resource and... [More]

After releasing Tivoli Service Automation Manager 7.2.2 in July with a great deal of new capabilities to cover customer use cases, now IBM Service Delivery Manager 7.2.2 is available. In addition to leveraging Tivoli Service Automation Manager V7.2.2, it Adds new monitoring capabilities of the virtualized infrastructure
through Tivoli Monitoring
for Virtual Servers V6.2.3 Provides enhanced metering and accounting capabilities, leveraging Tivoli Usage and Accounting Manager
V7.3 Is delivered as a set of virtual machines for simplified... [More]

Is Cloud the Next Utility , hmmm there's an interesting thought. I know many of us are still trying to define "what is Cloud" and "what does Cloud mean for my business." I spend my days in IBM's Cloud & Smarter Infrastructure team working on bringing "Cloud Solutions" to our customers. This turns out to be simply helping customers use what they have, maybe with a little twist, to build out their data center in a more robust, efficient manner. It's all about helping them meet... [More]

The new capacity planning tool, now available in Beta, will unlock the value of Tivoli Monitoring and Warehouse and enable a rich set of analytics on the existing data. This new capability will enable you to Understand and plan your virtual environments pro-actively , initially for VMWare Minimize risks in your plan Optimize how you use capacity in the environment with intelligent workload sizing and placement Apply business and technical policies to keep your environment efficient and risk-free Make changes in a what-if analysis framework and... [More]

If you are interested in attending our daily demo sessions (see https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/9e696bfa-94af-4f5a-ab50-c955cca76fd0/entry/new_schedule_and_agenda_for_daily_demo_sessions_of_ibm_smartcloud_provisioning2?lang=en) but: you do not feel comfortable with our schedule you would like to discuss with us about functionalities that are not covered by the current agenda you would like to join an exclusive, fully dedicated to you usability session Please post your request on the open beta forum

My team and I have been heads down working to get Smart Cloud Orchestrator , our newest cloud offering, to market. Last week we had our annual Pulse conference in Vegas. I'm just recovering from its aftermath now and wanted to write a short blog about the experience. It should be no surprise that folks like James Governer of Redmonk offered some interesting perspectives along with Infoworld , and Wired . While I am very pleased to hear the overwhelmingly positive press coverage, I am truly stoked about the direct customer feedback I... [More]

The IBM® Cloud Integration Lab has published a technical integration note titled CSP² Technical Integration Note: Managing the core system . This technical integration note provides a general introduction to the IBM Cloud Service Provider Platform (CSP²) integrated solutions, and describes the Phase 1 solution in detail. This technical integration note provides a Cloud Administrator with guidance on how to exploit the following capabilities in a cloud environment: Deploying and configuring the cloud and basic monitoring solutions... [More]

We are happy to announce that a Beta program is underway for the Tivoli Virtual Deployment Engine (VDE ), also known as High Scale Low Touch ( HSLT ). VDE will provide a low-cost, easy to implement cloud solution to fulfil demand for rapid deployment of virtual machines and storage in high or low volume environments with massive scalability, high resiliency and low management costs. It's been in development for a number of months and is now ready for wider trials with our customers. Those who have witnessed it first hand are highly impressed... [More]

Upgrading WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance environment service level using Secure Copy Protocol John Zucker Cloud technical consultant IBM Innovation Centre Hursley The purpose of the WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance (WCA) is to allow application configurations -- which are customizable to the virtual infrastructure environments required for particular projects -- to be deployed and maintained, so as to be ready to run distributed applications on the project's available cloud. The environments typically contain all the elements of WebSphere... [More]